The Ruling PP is Responsible for Barbaric Acts of Setting Human Beings Ablaze Alive (OLF-OLA Press Release)

Since yesterday, 11 March 2022, our psyche is gripped by the coming to light of a five minutes video showing Mr. Abiy Ahmed’s security forces and associated vigilante group roasting fellow human beings alive. The Stone Age savagery with which the crowd executed the heinous act has raised numerous unconventional questions about the very essence of what it means to be human. Managing to watch the entirety of the video is no easy feat. No decent human could stomach the sight of it. We express our heartfelt sympathy to the victims!

What is even more disturbing is the fact that this cruel barbarism is carried out by ordinary security personnel and in front of a regular crowd. While it is difficult to fathom that the perpetrators are normal human beings, there is no reason to believe otherwise. In a right geopolitical environment, the perpetrators could be someone's neighbors who live next door. One has to closely examine how and why such cruelty became commonplace in Ethiopia.

The OLF-OLA, however, rejects the wrong-headed focus on the identity of the immediate perpetrators of the crime. The immediate perpetrators are only the manifestations, or the ‘crime-children,’ if you will, of the Prosperity Party and its Amhara extremist allies who jointly own the grander project of genocide in Oromia, Tigray, Benishangul Gumuz, Qimant, Agew, Afar, Somali, Gambella, Sidama, and other regions. The atrocious act we are subjected to stems directly from the wicked rhetoric of extremist Amhara elites. It is a twisted epitome of bad rhetoric turning perfectly normal human beings into non-human animals, and this transformation was methodically calibrated and executed by the Prosperity Party and its Amhara terrorist allies. For so long, they demonized and dehumanized any population group who dared to stand against the centralization of power in Finfinne under the monochrome Amhara extremist click. They targeted Oromos, Tigrayans, the people of Benishangul Gumuz, Qimant, Agew, Afar, Somali, Gambella, Sidama, and others in their demonization rhetoric. Some recent examples from senior Amhara political leaders and business cronies are particularly warranted: Andargachew Tsige, a senior advisor of the ruling PP, Ezema, and an executive director of regimes mouthpiece, ESAT, said to a crowd in the Amhara regio“You should not show them (the Tigrayans) any mercy. You have to act beyond what our ethnic virtues allow. You should fight them with monstrous cruelty.”Worku Aytenew, an Amhara billionaire and a close ally of the PP publicly stated: “Killing them (the Tigrayans) is not enough. You should smoke, roast, and eat them like you would a slice of goat meat.” It bears reminding that such wretched public statements are typical of extremist Amhara elite who masquerade under the name of Ethiopia. No political or cultural leader from the Oromo, Tigray or other national groups in the country has ever uttered anything that comes a distant second to the ones frequented ad nauseem by Abiy’s Amhara extremist allies.

Therefore, regardless of the identity of the hands that set a human being on fire and executed the heinous acts, the policy, rhetoric, as well as security officers and militiamen entirely belong to Abiy’s Prosperity Party and his neo-neftegna allies. It is a testament to the claim that despicable rhetoric can make non-human animals out of otherwise regular people. It is another reminder that "those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

We should also remind everybody that such atrocious acts are being normalized in Abiy Ahmed’s Ethiopia. As we have repeatedly indicated, the Prosperity Party and its allies have been committing atrocities and attributing blame to the Oromo Liberation Army for their crimes. The PP has recently trained about 5,000 mercenaries in the Sankalle police academy who speak the Oromo language to commit similarly heinous crimes in an attempt to accuse the OLA.

Let there be no doubt that:
1) Abiy Ahmed’s PP and his Amhara extremist patrons are directly responsible for layers of atrocities that now include a stone-age barbarism of setting a fellow human ablaze alive.
2) They have been committing the same crimes in the Oromia region to accuse the Oromo Liberation Army of atrocities of their own doing.
3) We have evidence that the PP still plans to train more mercenaries who speak the Oromo language to kill and displace Oromos and ethnic minorities in the Oromia region in a continued effort to accuse the Oromo Liberation Army. May the wheels of justice turn faster for the victims!
Victory to the Oromo and all oppressed people!
OLF-OLA High Command
March 12, 2022